It Ends Here
by simplyprologue
Summary: DEADLIEST CATCH: Nina and Mandy Hansen have nothing in common except where they come from. The nightmare they are thrown into started over twenty years ago with their parents- and now it ends here, with them.
1. Prologue

**Prologue: Two Minutes in Heaven with Mandy Hansen  
**

* * *

For one thing, she was substantially warmer. The pressing, freezing, weight of the tremendous Alaskan ocean had suddenly disappeared as she slowly came back to herself. Unaware of her surroundings, Mandy wondered if she could open her eyes.

"You can."

The voice was a serene lilt, and calm; feminine, and seemingly coming from nowhere. Despite this, Mandy's concerns were immediately assuaged by the entrancing, other-worldly qualities of this woman's voice, which echoed impossibly underwater. Comforted to such a degree, she opened her azure eyes.

The water was an absurd crystalline color, so completely opposite of the inky, obsidian fortress that was the Bering Sea—the sea that had mercilessly stolen her body and robbed her of her senses. To an even higher contrast, these waters were still. Not stagnant, but peaceful and abating. The temperature was an alleviating difference to the frigidness of her previous location. Not warm enough to be likened to bath water; it was cool and reassuring.

Mandy could not breath, and, surprised, found that her lacking of that capability was unimportant. She simply no longer felt that she needed to. There was no burning fire in her lungs anymore, or the sense of searing suffocation that steadfastly accompanied the trial of drowning. She felt detached from her lungs; she did not merely not need to breath, but more so forgotten how to. The instinct had vanished, the action a foggy memory.

There was a motion in the water around her, but it did not interrupt the harmony of the realm in which she lay—or rather, floated. It was light, a gentle current that caused Mandy's hair to swirl gently. Pleasant, even, nothing akin to the washing machine hell of the Bering; Mandy gracefully propelled her body around, pale blonde hair pooling angelically around her head, creating the illusion of a golden halo.

She recognized what was holding her up, or, at least, it had become known to her—a fishing net. Intricately woven, it was comprised of hundreds of thousands of millions of miniscule gold threads. She reached out and touched it, rubbing it between her short fingers. It was soft and feathery, like touching liquid gold. It possessed an odd, curious heat. It began to wrap itself lazily around her weight; not tightly, but its movement was enough to alarm Mandy, breaking the utopian aura of the place.

She began to struggle minutely against it. Her efforts were fruitless, as it continued on unheeded by her ministrations.

"Do not be afraid, child." The soothing, disembodied voice spoke again. Mandy found that her terror had dissipated without reason. She realized for the first time that the voice was speaking Norwegian; but that it wasn't the genial, rolling tongue that often spilled from the lips of her parents and relatives. Instead, it was the coarser, Germanic predecessor of the modern language: Old Norse. Somehow, it didn't shock Mandy that she could understand it without pretense. "I am here with you."

More movement; Mandy felt a presence beside her, and without truly giving it any thought, she spun herself around, finding the motion to be easy and effortless. The fishing net seemed to hold her in her place, suspending her in endless berth of the water that housed her; it appeared to have neither surface nor bottom. The gold thread of the net followed her and twirled out, creating a skirt, almost. Mandy observed its elegance.

She raised her gaze, and met the woman to whom the voice belonged to.

She was, in short, beautiful.

A long, aristocratic hand brushed against one of Mandy's cheekbones. "All is fine, daughter," she soothed Mandy without opening her fine, bee-stung lips, still speaking in the archaic foreign tongue. Instead the words seemed to reverberate from all around her, coming from every inch of the endless water.

"Daughter?" Mandy inquired pensively, without any animosity but full of curiosity. She also did not need to open her mouth to speak.

"All those entwined with the sea are my children," the woman replied in a loving, maternal tone, bringing her hand down from Mandy's face to lay it lightly on her shoulder. "Those belonging to the Hansen clan have long been my children, Mandy Ran, daughter of Sigurd and June."

Mandy did not feel the need to question this piece of preternatural knowledge and was otherwise disinclined to.

A realization.

The woman nodded. "Yes, my darling child. I am Ran."

A goddess, Mandy passively concluded, more specifically, the one she was named after. She should have previously supposed this. Upon reaching the supposition, she was met with memories of a glossy, hard-backed picture book laden with pictures and child-appropriate descriptions of the Norse gods.

Another realization.

Mandy disentangled one of her hands from the gentle netting, and pressed it frantically against her breast as frenzied thoughts made their way into her brain. Nothing; an absolutely startling nothing, and if it was not for the net holding her in place, the mass that had suddenly appeared in Mandy's stomach surely would had dragged her down like a stone. She knew what was happening, what events were currently transpiring, and looked helplessly at the ethereal deity in front of her. She found Ran's classic Nordic features distorted in sorrow.

"I'm dead." Mandy thought, the two words reverberating emptily across the great expanse of the goddess' domain. Ran raised both of her kind hands and placed them motherly—calmly, gently, untiringly—on Mandy's cheeks. It was at that precise moment that Mandy decided that out of all things, she desired her mother most of all; her mother, with her platinum hair, bright eyes, and sparkling-diamond laugh.

And she knew it was true, without confirmation: she, Mandy Hansen, had died, drowned in the Bering Sea that was both her family's tormentor and benefactress. The panic she felt in her last mortal moments resurfaced and surged and began to grasp at her, claw at her, desperately.

Mandy acutely remembered something from the glossy, vivid pages from the children's book of Norse mythology: gold. Ran was attracted to gold. Mandy hastily reached around her neck and unclasped the chain of her gold cross necklace. She attempted to force it into the goddess' grasp. Mandy found that Ran's dreamy sea-foam colored eyes were closed. She looked deeply immersed in thought.

The thin chain of the necklace lingered and wavered daintily in a non-existent current, the plain, unadorned cross glinting dimly. Mandy's eyes drifted closed, hopeless.

Ran smoothed her thumbs over Mandy's closed eyelids. "No. No, my daughter. Not yet. It is not certain yet." Mandy slowly reopened her eyes.

Ran's eyes flashed open. She took notice of the cross for the first time, and seemed enchanted by it. Greed shimmered in her heavily-lidded eyes. A gift from her father on her confirmation, Mandy noted mentally, her internal voice resigned and forlorn. Her heart, despite being stilled, began to yearn for him as well. The being detected her sadness and yearning, as well as it's meaning and intent. The greed in Ran's eyes flickered, reappeared slightly, then quelled. She looked upwards, blue-blonde hair fanning out behind her.

"Perhaps," she began lightly, ponderously, "It is time for you to go."

"What?" Mandy questioned, her body jerked in surprise. She did not know what to think as the golden-spun net began to unwrap itself from her thin frame. Ran smiled fondly, and a surface visualized, light glinting off of it. Mandy found that the cross was returned around her neck, its light weight comfortable in the hollow dip between her clavicles.

"It is not your time, child. There is still much left for you to do, and those above the surface have ensured that you will be able to do it." Her voice seemed farther away, and when Mandy was capable of tearing her gaze away from the glorious surface and the light permeating it, she found that Ran was no longer present; she was nothing more than the echoing, omniscient voice. "You must go, dear, or I will have kept you too long and you will find yourself unable to return."

And with those words of encouragement, Mandy Hansen surfaced and re-entered the world of the living.

* * *

**Disclaimer:** Not mine. Not an inch of it. Deadliest Catch belongs to the Discovery Channel and the Hansens... belong to themselves? This is a work of pure fiction. None of this is real.

**A/N:** So... many, many props go out to Lauren, aka Mahone-Chic-89 for her help on this story. Without her as my sounding board and encouragement, I probably would have never written this story. Anywho, I will update this story (hopefully) everyday, barring freak knitting accidents, bear attacks, my internet going down, or illness. Although illness may lead to me being more productive. We may never know. LOL.

So, just so you know, this prologue takes place during the climax of the story. So who wants to know how our beloved Mandy got herself into this situation. LEAVE ME A REVIEW SO I KNOW!!

Pwease?


	2. Chapter One

**Chapter One: Idle Chatter is the Beginning of All Things**

* * *

"You're weird." Nina jabbed, not harshly, but tersely enough to induce a twinge of annoyance in her intended target.

"I'm aware." Mandy retorted, just as curt. Around them, their three, much younger, cousins inhabited several pieces of furniture in their living room and were engaged in some sort of television show. Mandy further buried her nose in her book in response to her sister's words.

"Just what are you reading, anyway?" Nina asked uninterestedly. Mandy rolled her eyes, lowering the novel a fraction.

"You don't care," was her reply. Nina quietly inspected the moderately gruesome cover of the book and shrugged indifferently.

"Probably not," she acquiesced. Bracing herself against the sides of the plush, suede armchair she was lounging in, she gracefully pushed herself into a standing position. Nina proceeded to walk into the adjoining kitchen. Mandy, noticing her sister's movements, snapped her book shut and followed in suit. She found Nina in the midst of rifling through the out-of-the-way drawer that housed mostly just take-out menus and rubber bands.

"What are you doing?" Mandy wanted to know.

Nina tapped the surface of a plain, white, fat business envelope sitting on the counter impatiently. "Pizza," she responded shortly. The envelope was engorged with money for such purposes. Mandy nodded unnecessarily, as her sisters was not actually facing her. She lightly placed the hardcover copy of _Pride and Prejudice and Zombies _on the granite counter.

"Oh." She stood, for a few moments after, mentally berating herself for her unintelligent reply. She waited silently for Nina to unearth the appropriate pamphlet.

They had been left to baby-sit their cousins, Erik, Stefani and Logan, when their two sets of parents had been more or less obliged to attend a Discovery Channel dinner, the kind of which her father found odious without the company of one or both of his brothers, or at least the captain Phil Harris, and that her mother loved to dress up for. That fact being accounted for, as well as her relationship with her sister-in-law, her Uncle Edgar and Aunt Louise had been encouraged to attend. After a small amount of conspiring between her mother and Aunt Louise, the four were to go, while Nina and Mandy would watch the smaller children.

Although not entirely opposed to the idea of spending time with her extended family, Mandy would have rather spent the night with her girlfriends instead of providing constant entertainment for three prepubescents. Nina, too, would have rather gone out with her boyfriend of two years, Elliot, but it was impossible. More impossible than usual, Mandy supposed, since their father wasn't overly fond of Elliot (despite his being in their mother's extreme favor), or, perhaps, the concept of one of his daughters being in a long-term romantic relationship. Their mother was the oft-proclaimed boss of the Hansen household, but on some things their father held his ground, and this was one of them.

"Are you going to order, or am I?" Nina's incessant, no-nonsense tone forced Mandy to retreat from her thoughts. She keened at the cordless phone that Nina purported in her general direction.

"No."

Nina rolled her eyes in an exaggerated fashion, and sneered, "They're not going to reach through the phone and grab you, you know, you anti-social freak."

Mandy pouted, puffing out her lower lip, her face stretched into a hyperbole of the expression. Nina stared at her, incredulous, but never-the-less continued to dial the number of the pizzeria and order two large cheese pizzas. Hanging up, she shook her head. "You're so weird."

Mandy stifled a small laugh in her throat, her face betraying a portion of the emotion connected with it. Nina's betrayed less as she swept past her sister and back into the darkened living room, which was lit solely by the TV.

"I'm aware!" she called sarcastically after her sister, snatching her book, tracing her sister's steps.

When the doorbell rang twenty-five minutes later, Mandy turned and looked expectantly at Nina. "They really could reach out and grab me this time."

Nina looked at Mandy, who was smiling innocently, to her cousins, and to the envelope that had been left conveniently on the table next to the front door, then back to her sister. "What are you, three?"

"I am!" their youngest cousin cut in earnestly. His older brother, Erik, rolled his eyes, but Nina smiled fondly.

"Logan, I love you so much more than Mandy. You know that, right?" Nina declared solemnly to small child, who grinned and nodded, bouncing in his seat. The doorbell rang again. This time, Nina went to answer it without argument, grabbing the money as she reached to unlock the door. While rifling through the crisp bills she asked, without looking up, "I'm sorry, how much do I owe you again?"

When she looked up, she was staring down the barrel of a gun.

Nina gulped audibly. "Oh dear sweet Jesus."

"Hello, sweetheart," the man cooed sickly, raising the gun to her forehead. "You'll be coming with me tonight."

* * *

It had been over two hours since the intruder had forced the five collective Hansen children from the family home in a tiny suburb just outside the city limits of Seattle and into an inconspicuous dark-paneled van, then onto a decrepit fishing vessel docked just outside of what Nina could guess was Puget Sound. She had craned her neck as the man dragged her and Mandy by the arm aboard, searching for the Northwestern, but couldn't find it.

The kidnapper had backed them into a dusty and unused stateroom that had no sheets, let alone mattresses on the beds. Regardless, Mandy had climbed onto one of the top bunks without saying a word, and lay down against the hard, grainy wood.

The door was well locked, or barricaded, maybe, from what Nina could tell. She had heard the tell-tale click of a deadlock as the man shut the door, closing them in after shoving the minors into the cramp, confined space, Nina sat on the floor, unmoving. Logan's tiny head laid in her lap, having recently fallen into a fitful sleep after the excitement had, for now, died down. He was too little to fully understand the situation.

Erik stood unflinchingly looking out the one foggy window in the room.

Stefani leaned against Nina's side, and when Nina turned to look at her, she discovered that she too, was asleep. For a few minutes, the room was eerily silent. Then:

"Mom and Dad should have gotten home by now." Mandy spoke softly in a near whisper from her position above the others. Nina looked up at her. The only parts of Mandy visible from her vantage point were her toes.

Nina swallowed, her throat dry. "Yeah." She paused, unsure of what to say past that. "I hope so."

It went unsaid that their parents would know what had occurred, if the vanishment of their children hadn't tipped them off. The glass paneling on the front door had been shattered when Nina frantically attempted to shut it in their abductor's face, and several of her mother's vases were broken from Mandy hurling them at the man in desperate self-defense; the table overturned from when the man flipped it to reveal Stefani and Logan's hiding place.

Nina glanced at Erik, who had tried to physically overpower the man to little to no success. He remained staring out the window.

"What time do you think it is?" Nina inquired, mainly wanting to keep her sister talking. She knew that leaving Mandy alone in her mind was never a smart thing. Mandy sighed heavily, and a few moments passed.

"Ten, eleven o'clock at the latest?" she replied. "I don't know."

More contemplative silence.

Nina could imagine that her sister was chewing her fingernails, her eyes engaged in some pointless task, like counting the amount of dots in the faded ceiling tiles. A few more minutes passed as Nina observed her sister's feet.

"What do you think they'll do?" Mandy asked, sounding more like a curious child than a fearful captive. Nina could hear her sitting up—Mandy's head was suddenly visible, and she had pulled the hood of her oversized, worn Northwestern sweatshirt, the one that was frayed around the hems, over her pale face. Nina remembered that Mandy had commandeered it from Dad a few years ago, and suddenly felt slightly envious of the comforting article of clothing. "Mom and Dad, I mean."

Honestly, Nina had no clue what their parents and Uncle Edgar and Aunt Louise would do upon arriving at their house, finding it broken-in, partly destroyed, and childless. However, she felt the need to answer her sister, give her something to work with. "Call the police, I guess. What else could they do?"

Mandy shut her eyes and pulled her jean-clad knees up to her chest. She rested her chin on them. Nina watched her, mildly worried of how her sister's moods could turn. "I have to hand it to this guy," Mandy started, her voice laced with malice and revulsion, "they'll probably never find us out here."

"Don't say that..." Nina's voice trailed off as she pondered what Mandy had said. She glanced down at the sleeping forms of her cousins. Her mind began to cloud with unanswerable, by her, at least, questions.

_Where is he taking us? Why us? Why all of us? Whose boat is this? Will someone notice it's gone? What direction are we sailing in? Is this boat even seaworthy? What does he want—money? Or does he want us... dead? _

Her mind reeled. From her location on the top of the bunk, Mandy could practically hear her older sister's mind whirring, going through the same questions she had asked herself. She glanced at Erik, whose gaze remained on the waters outside the shoddy porthole.

"We're heading north, I'm pretty sure. For awhile we were going northwest—I think he's aiming for Canadian waters. We're probably in them now." Mandy shared, breaking her sister's reverie. Nina stared at her blankly. Unfazed, Mandy continued, "I have an okay sense of direction, you know. I've been paying attention since we left."

Nina licked her lips, which she had spent the past half an hour worrying between her teeth. They were beginning to get chapped. She nodded. "It's something," she whispered, stroking Logan's light blonde hair. The sisters descended into an understood silence.

* * *

The proper comportment for one who has just arrived home to find their sanctuary broken into and their children missing has never been described. Needless to say, the Hansen's were understandably in varying degrees of open distress.

The police had been called, an extensive report had been made, and a large group of officers and search dogs had been dispatched to start the search efforts. The majority of them had left, with two armed policemen posted out on the street in an unmarked car for their security—something suggested by a nameless, faceless Seattle Police Department sergeant—being the only remnants of the police force.

Sig sat on the couch in quiet, stunned, disbelief, while his younger brother paced restlessly in front of him, entrapped in his mind. Louise had taken up the duty of fixing coffee, and in actuality was crying silently over the sink while the dark brown liquid dripped in a steady stream into the glass pot below it.

June, however, found herself most isolated in her grief. She stared wide-eyed in breathless terror at her home, where she had lived for the past twenty years; the house she and Sig had purchased as newlyweds no longer felt like the warm, inviting place she had carefully sculpted it to be. She found herself incapable of moving out of the foyer as she scrutinized every detail.

The over turned dinner table lay uselessly on its side, and she spotted scratches in its finish. Several picture frames has fallen off the wall or were in danger of, or were extremely crooked. June looked down at her feet, where there were thousands of infinitesimal glass shards, from where the front door had been kicked, or smashed, or... whatever-ed in. Other things were out of place, and there were dents in the walls; spots of impact from where someone had thrown flower vases—some still containing flowers—at someone else. Crushed wildflowers with broken stems laid abandoned on the floor in a puddle of water, detached petals all around them.

June's eyes were brought to the glistening crystals at her feet. She couldn't help the memories that the sight of the ransacked living room brought up...

_The small blonde young woman cowered in the shadow of the much larger man, her waifish frame wracked with tremors. "Alek... Alek please, I'm so-RY!" the last syllable in her feeble sentence raising to a shriek as the man, Alek, angrily grabbed her by her upper arms and tossed her out of his warpath. _

_Her head hit the coffee table with a sickening thud. Recovering hastily, the woman pressed a quivering hand against her now-bleeding forehead. She used her free hand to crawl onto the couch as her pallor turned an unhealthy gray, jumping as Alek picked up an empty jelly jar with daisies arranged it, measured the weight in his hand, and hurled it across the room, satisfied at the sound of glass colliding with the plaster. _

_For good measure, he roughly pushed the threadbare armchair over in her direction. He turned around, breathing heavily through his nostrils, giving the illusion of a rampaging bull—an apt description. He raised a burly fist in her direction, and the blonde woman pressed herself into the couch, unable to move. She screwed her eyes shut, preparing for him to strike her._

"_Get out of here, you little bitch," he seethed. When she opened her blue eyes, bloodshot from crying, he was pointing his index finger a few inches in front of her face. The woman shrieked, jumped up, and ran out of the small apartment, barely taking the time to slip on her snow boots, let alone grab her purse or a jacket. _

"June! June—honey," her husband's voice and the pressure of his hands on hers was enough to pull her away from the past. June blinked, her vision clearing. His thumb gently caressing hers, he murmured, "Are you alright?"

June realized what she had been doing; her gaze dipped to the floor as she lightly lifted one of her feet—she had been crushing the glass into the hardwood floor. She relaxed her shoulders, and tried to smile. Her eyes immediately filled with tears, and with no hesitation she wrapped her arms tightly around Sig's neck and buried her face in his shirt. "No." she whispered, terror evident in her voice.

Sig's strong arms wrapped around her as the tears began in earnest. The gesture, meant to offer comfort and reassurance, did neither, as June began to envision all of the horrible things that could have already happened to her daughters.

"What are we going to do?" she cried softly into the soft linen of his dress shirt, clutching at the material present around the nape of his neck.

He dropped a kiss onto her hair, and rubbed circles into her back. "I don't know Juna," Sig Hansen maintained an impressive façade of strength and confidence, but underneath it, he was beginning to crack. "I'll bring the girls home. I promise."

June sniffed quietly, and pulled herself from her husbands embrace to look him in the eye, only to find shining determination and the reticence of unshed tears. She gave up a sad smile for their own sake. Sig returned it for a fleeting, glimmering moment, and for that moment, they could believe that everything was going to be just fine. Sig rubbed a tear from June's cheek, and softly pressed his lips to the spot. He had no idea how he was going to do it, but he was going to get Nina and Mandy back.

* * *

"How did he know that we ordered pizza?" Erik's first words since they had been ripped from their normal, suburban lives caused both of the Hansen sisters to jump. In Nina's lap, Logan stirred. Stefani jerked awake, but rubbed her face in Nina's sleeve and fell back asleep. Turning around, Erik looked mindful of his little siblings. Mandy sat up at the question.

"I don't know..." Mandy began, deferring to Nina by looking at her.

Nina understood Mandy's intentions. "I'm not... maybe he was watching us? Through the window and saw me order?"

Erik shook his head. Mandy agreed, "You weren't standing anywhere near the kitchen or front window when you ordered. Or in the line of sight of anyone looking through it, remember?"

Nina began to chew on her lip again. Erik continued, "Not to sound like, I don't know, CSI, or whatever, but what if he tapped your phone?"

Nina halted her nervous habit, and Mandy studied Erik inquisitively. Nina spoke carefully and deliberately as she pondered this new option, "That's... quite possible."

Mandy rubbed her hands over her face tiredly, her small hands half-way through the motion before something stopped her. "You do realize what that would mean, don't you?" she asked, horrified.

"No, what?" Erik asked, peering up at his older, slightly odd, cousin.

"That whoever this guy is, if that's true: he's been watching us."

* * *

**Disclaimer:** STILL NOT MINE. Things that are mine, by this point, are: the unnamed villian, Alek, and the boat they're all being held hostage on. Woo!

**A/N:** Alright, so one of my pet peeves are people who fav or story alert my stories and don't leave reveiws! Tell me what you like! Or tell me what you hate! Lemme know what's working! I crave concrit!

Again, major props to Lauren for helping me with this.

P.S. This chapter takes place about three days before the prologue, in case you were confused and didn't read last chapter's A/N. Although if you didn't read last chapters you might not read this one either... hmm... what a conundrum!

Review! Review! Review! See that lovely button right below this? It craves to be pushed!

* * *


	3. Chapter Two

**Chapter Two: Fear is the Brightest of Signs**

* * *

It was several long hours past midnight, and most of the occupants of the crowded stateroom had succumbed to an uneasy sleep—all except for Mandy, who lay wide-awake and alert on the uncomfortable top bunk. Her blue eyes stared blankly at the wood-paneled ceiling.

They were going west. She was certain. They had been going northwest at first, then north, but now Mandy was certain they were heading west. From all that she could propose in her mind, this guy had been trying to clear international waters—this fact alone gave Mandy a small amount of hope. If he wanted out of US waters then he must think there was a possibility that her parents would know that he had taken them on a boat.

They were going west. They were in the Gulf of Alaska; while that was an expanse of over a million square miles, these facts gave her some comfort. Knowledge made her feel safe.

Folding her hands over the top of her stomach, she began to sing one of her mother's favorite songs.

"_We're here where the daylight begins... The fog on the streetlight slowly thins... Water on water's the way... The safety of shoreline fading away_." She may have already been awake for twenty hours, but there was no way that Mandy was going to sleep.

* * *

"_I fell down the stairs again. Alek keeps saying that he's going to fix them, but, well, you know his work. He never gets the time," the blonde woman explained, leaning over the counter in the woman's restroom in the Dutch Harbor Medical Clinic. She dabbed at the gash on her forehead with a wet cloth before reaching for the suture kit._

_The brunette, dressed in navy blue scrubs, standing next to the blonde woman eyed her warily. Her hip rested on the counter. She stood with her arms folded under her chest and her lips pursed, as if she was physically holding back her words. _

_The blonde woman attempted a smile, but only achieved a watery smirk. The brunette's expression melted into one of sympathy. "Honey..." _

_The blonde woman broke her gaze away from the brunette's and turned to look herself in the mirror. Her pale face was swollen, eyes red from tears, and a bruise had bloomed across her right cheekbone and up her temple. Her corn silk hair was parting several different ways and stuck out at odd angles. There was blood—her own—on the collar of her shirt. Her hands shook. She willed them to still. _

_She wordlessly threaded the needle with suturing thread, steeled herself, and made the first stitch, an incoherent hiss of pain escaping through her teeth. _

June blinked and put down the coffee cup she had been washing, jumping slightly when she put it down harder than intended. The night had dredged up unpleasant memories from the depths of her mind, where they had been safely tucked away for a _long_ time. She had unearthed one, and now they were playing in sequence in her mind, each one as sharp and Technicolor as they had been decades ago.

She glanced uneasily at the clock; four in the morning.

They were taken over eight hours ago.

June laughed ironically to herself. She felt like she was in a bad episode of _20/20_ or _48 Hours_. She began to feel the old anger begin to stir inside her ribcage. The adrenalin coursed through her veins and her heart rate increased. She suddenly felt the urge to pick up the coffee cup from the counter and fling it across the room, if only to gain the satisfaction from seeing it be destroyed from her own movements. Instead, she tapped her fingernails restlessly against the ceramic mug.

The grief had not completely subsided. However, it had festered into something else: the thirst for vengeance. June Hansen had decided twenty long years ago that she was no longer helpless. She could be powerful. Someone to be revered and awed; she would never cower again.

She jerked as the phone rang, her grip on the mug tightening. Her sudden movement almost sent it flying off the counter and onto the floor.

At the noise, Sig stirred from his position at the breakfast table. He raised his head slightly from in-between his hands, his light eyes red and tired. June looked at him, silently inquiring who would call at this hour of the morning. He shrugged back at her, exhausted.

"Maybe it's the police." June supplied with a tinge of hope in her voice. It wasn't until her hand was on the receiver that she realized that she was shaking. Forcing it still, she pressed the device against her cheek, "Hello?"

"Hello Junie. Long time, no see."

June felt her knees giving out from underneath her.

Sig jumped up as the phone slipped from her hands, barely catching his wife as she collapsed onto her knees. The plastic device clattered emptily on the tile. Cradling her with one arm, he grasped the phone, picking it up from the floor, and almost yelled into it, "Who the hell is this?" All trace of fatigue and lassitude was no longer present. June looked at him, fearful.

"Hansen," a male voice bit back, unsurprised but full of malice.

Sig paled, subconsciously clutching June closer. "Bondevik." He felt terror flood his senses and cloud his brain, causing his adrenalin to loop around his system for a second time. "You're supposed to be in jail."

"Ah, well, yes, can't deny that. But things don't always turn out like we intend." Bondevik drawled over the phone, clearly unfazed. Sig's grip on the receiver increased; his knuckles turning white. Awakened by the commotion, Edgar and Louise quietly creeped into the kitchen. They loomed in the doorway between the den and the kitchen, waiting.

"Where are my daughters?" he intended the question to be a threat, but some of his anxiety and alarm managed to infuse itself in his voice as well.

The man's voice was almost bored. "You didn't mean to exclude your niece and nephews, right, Hansen? Little brother wouldn't be too happy about that. Although, you've always been very 'every man for himself,' haven't you?"

"Where—are—Nina—and—Mandy?" he cut the sentence into fragments, spitting each angry word into the speaker. June extricated herself from Sig's arms, sitting up. A spark of fury ignited in her eyes as she muddled through the initial shock and disbelief.

Sig let out a yelp of surprise as June snatched the phone back from him. "Where are my children, you sick son of a bitch!" she seethed. Edgar and Louise continued to watch the power play from the sidelines.

"Wow, Junie. What a mouth you've gotten from hanging around—."

She cut him off. "I swear, if you lay a hand—a _single _fucking hand—on either one of my girls, I will personally see to it that you die, got it?"

The man on the other side of the phone chuckled, clearly finding her rage facetious. "Junie, I called because I wanted to level the playing field a bit. Although, now that you mention it, Nina does look quite a bit like you..."

"BASTARD!" she shrieked, coiling a second hand around the phone. The other three adults stared at her incredulously. "Where are they!?"

Bondevik cackled, a disconcerting sound to her ears. "They're northwest of Seattle; floating somewhere in the Gulf of Alaska. With me."

The line went dead; the lifeless dial tone all that could be heard.

* * *

Bondevik was still laughing to himself, as if he was amused by some inside joke or secret message only he knew the cipher of, as he clicked off the power to the satellite phone. He would let them tow the line—he knew Sig Hansen's MO. Any glimpse of getting his children back was enough for him to jump aboard the Northwestern and sail off in attempt to find them without any consideration of logic, what the police would want him to do, or Coast Guard regulations. And June; Junie would just follow him like she followed him anywhere else. He could lead her off a cliff and she would go with him, clutching his hand the entire time.

He grinned in twisted anticipation.

He had been waiting for this. For twenty-two long, tedious, unforgiving years. He would get what he wanted.

* * *

"Mandy?" a small, timid voice inquired.

_West, west, west, _Mandy repeated in her head, over and over; her mantra. They were going west, and if they went west enough, they would be in the Bering Sea, which is what, after being left to consider things inside her head for several hours on end; Mandy had decided where their captor was heading. At the voice, she sat up with a small groan; her lower back was beginning to twinge in defiance to the hard surface she had been laying on. In a quick survey of the room, she concluded that everyone, except for herself and the source of the voice, was asleep.

"Yeah Stef?" Mandy curled her fingers around her converse-clad feet and leaned forward, closing her eyes as she felt the burning stretch. One of her feet was asleep and protested as she rolled her ankle around in its socket.

She looked down at the six-year-old girl who was peering up at her from the crook of Nina's arm to find the child's eyes filled with tears. _Oh no..._Mandy thought. Not emotions. She was atrocious at emotions. Emotions were Nina's thing. Mandy was more of the stand-awkwardly-to-the-side kind of person. Hell, her own emotions made her feel awkward. A precarious, nervous sensation appeared in her stomach. _I gotta try..._

She swung her feet over the side of the bunk and gracelessly climbed down, stumbling over her numb foot as she landed, and clumsily kneeled down to her cousin. "What's up, honey?" The term of endearment slid apprehensively from her tongue.

"Mandy, I'm scared." For the first time that night—or morning, perhaps—Mandy was legitimately terrified. Naturally, she had been scared when she had been plucked from her perfectly boring life and foisted into this nightmare, or as she had sardonically referred to it in her head: Tom Clancy novel. But that was herself, and if there was one thing Mandy Hansen prided herself on, it was her ability to remain self-dependant, obdurate and impassive—and generally unperceptive or rather, forgetful, of other people's feelings.

Quod erat demonstrandum, she had no idea what to do in response to Stefani's fear.

Going off what miniscule amount of maternal instinct she possessed, Mandy inelegantly pulled Stefani into a stiff-armed hug. The child responded immediately without discerning any hesitation on Mandy's part. Mandy lifted her into her grasp, and Stefani wrapped her short, thin legs around her cousin's torso. Moving slowly, Mandy lowered herself onto the bottom bunk, assuring she didn't bump her head on her way down. Stefani pressed her face into Mandy's sweatshirt and Mandy was unsure if Stefani was crying or simply falling asleep.

She tried not to jump as the deadbolt on the door unlatched. Stefani made to lift her face from Mandy's chest, but Mandy's hand unthinkingly rose to the nape of her neck and held her in place, the other strengthening its hold on her lower back. Stefani whimpered; Mandy's eyes narrowed as her gaze locked on the door.

Nina was torn from her slumber as the door opened violently. Logan, at her side, jerked awake. Erik stirred. Forcing Logan to stay on the ground, Nina scrambled to her feet, attempting to block her sister and cousins from the man's view.

The monster loomed in the shadows of the darkened galley, his face undistinguishable.

Nina spoke first: "Who are you!?" she demanded, her voice betraying none of her true emotions to the untrained ear. However, with Mandy's fourteen years of experience, she could readily recognize the anxious panic in her older sister's voice.

She couldn't see the man, but Nina was certain that he was affecting the same false sickly-sweet smile he wore when he knocked on her door. She glanced minutely back at her sister. The man took one step forward and Nina took one in retreat.

"Do you really wanna know?" He asked sarcastically as if Nina's actions were immature or particularly illogical. Nina clenched her teeth and tensed her muscles in attempt to keep herself from trembling as she nodded, full of trepidation.

The man stepped into the light. He was tall, and burly; his hair light brown and unkempt—greasy and in need of a good combing. His complexion was pale, sallow, and looked like it hadn't seen the sun in an extended amount of time. His eyes were a cold, watery gray; the color of an ice-over pond. They possessed a frigid, detached look. His crooked smile alluded to the fact that Nina's hesitant bravado was not fooling him—but instead he found it rather entertaining.

A crazy glint appeared in his eyes.

A noise of strangled surprise escaped Mandy's mouth as he grabbed Nina's arm and dragged her out of the stateroom, swinging the door shut behind him.

"Let me go!" They could hear her scream through the thin door. Erik, who was now on his feet, pushed his brother out of the way and tugged frantically on the door latch; Logan crawled out of his brother's way. Mandy found herself with two frightened children in her lap, but found whatever ability she had briefly obtained to comfort had exited her body as she gaped at the door.

"Nina," Mandy whispered, short of breath. She felt like someone had just knocked the wind out of her; her lungs empty and dry, burning for air.

_No, _she thought. _Now I'm legitimately terrified. _

* * *

Nina gasped in pain as her lower back collided with the corner of the counter in the unlit galley. _Come on Hansen, pull yourself together. This is a chance,_ she reminded herself hectically. _Now is not the time to lose your head._ Blindly reaching back, she allowed both of her hands to grasp the counter as the man openly leered at her.

"Who are you?!" She repeated, attempting to look him in the eye, but finding herself unable to. _Keep your head, Hansen. _A very large part of her wanted to run screaming like a small girl and hide behind her father.

The man guffawed. "You're a feisty one, aren't you?" Nina wanted to curl up into a ball as his violating gaze examined every square inch of her body, pausing at certain spots that made her feel extremely disquieted.

"_You're a feisty one aren't you?" The man laughed, pinching the blonde woman's waist. A look of utmost disgust appeared on her face as she slapped his hand down. _

"_Get off me, Alek!" she snarled. _

Nina reeled as the expression on the man's face abruptly turned from one of chided amusement to one of rage. "You bitch!" he exclaimed, incensed.

"I—I didn't say anything!" she squeaked, her voice rising almost an octave as she barely managed to evade his grasp, fleeing to the other side of the galley. He turned around slowly, shoulders hunched over. Nina braced herself against the door of the dilapidated, out-of-date refrigerator as he approached her.

He appraised her slender form.

"_I—I didn't say anything!" the blonde woman yelped as the man grabbed her forearms, roughly pulling her close. She stumbled over her own feet through the harsh movement. _

"_Oh, but it's what you didn't say," he murmured in her ear as she struggled to get away. _

_Two more weeks, two more weeks, she rehashed in her mind, over and over again._ _Two more weeks and he'll be back at sea for five months._

"_Alek, get off!" she attempted to push him off of her to no avail. He growled, low and feral. The blonde woman screamed as she was thrown to the ground. _

"Wha-what?" Nina choked out, and found that she had backed herself into a corner. Her eyes darted wildly around the tiny galley, searching for any possible escape route. She shrieked as the man's hand snaked around her wrist, pulling her from where the counter and oven met and against his hard chest.

Nina thrashed against his grip; she began to sob as his other hand landed on her hip and trailed upwards. Her body trembled in the pinnacle of fear as his large hand hit the apex of her waist.

"Please, pleasepleaseplease!" She cried, breathing unsteady and shallow.

His hand continued upwards, coming to land on her breast. Nina turned ashen; she held her breath.

_The small blonde young woman cowered in the shadow of the much larger man, her waifish frame wracked with tremors. "Alek... Alek please, I'm so-RY!" the last syllable in her feeble sentence raising to a shriek as the man, Alek, angrily grabbed her by her upper arms and tossed her out of his warpath. _

_Her head hit the coffee table with a sickening thud. Recovering hastily, the woman pressed a quivering hand against her now-bleeding forehead. She used her free hand to crawl onto the couch as her pallor turned an unhealthy gray, jumping as Alek picked up an empty jelly jar with daisies arranged it, measured the weight in his hand, and hurled it across the room, satisfied at the sound of glass colliding with the plaster. _

_For good measure, he roughly pushed the threadbare armchair over in her direction. He turned around, breathing heavily through his nostrils, giving the illusion of a rampaging bull—an apt description. He raised a burly fist in her direction, and the blonde woman pressed herself into the couch, unable to move. She screwed her eyes shut, preparing for him to strike her._

"_Get out of here, you little bitch," he seethed. When she opened her blue eyes, bloodshot from crying, he was pointing his index finger a few inches in front of her face. The woman shrieked, jumped up, and ran out of the small apartment, barely taking the time to slip on her snow boots, let alone grab her purse or a jacket. _

For the first time, the man looked at her face. He scrutinized her as a look of true confusion dawned on her face as she stopped struggling. The girl had the same round lips, sun-colored hair, and high-cheekbones. Her eyes, distended in fear, were the same almond shape.

But the color was wrong. They were blue, yes, but not the right shade. Hers were a stormy shade of blue, on the cusp of gray and cobalt. This girl's—they were too light, too blue.

Nina's pupils contracted in fear. She breathed in heady gasps as his hold tightened, vice-like around her wrist. Nina could feel the blood constricting in around the area, pulsing, pulsing—she could feel it pounding in her ears and in her chest. The man removed his hand from her breast, repulsed.

This wasn't her. The man's cruel eyes shut to narrow slits.

Dragging Nina behind him, he threw open the door to the stateroom, and threw her back into the prison.

* * *

Erik caught Nina around the middle as she was tossed back into the room, saving her from falling into the side of the bunk bed. Mandy unceremoniously pushed Stefani off her lap and stood up hastily. Erik steadied Nina in his grasp.

"Get off me!" she implored, voice wavering, She pushed Erik's hands off of her.

"Nina?" Erik questioned, startled. Nina paid him no heed, or anyone else for that matter, as she scrambled up the ladder of the bunk bed, disappearing from view. Her foot slipped on the way up and Mandy's arm shot out to prevent Nina from falling. Mandy recoiled as Nina slapped her arm down, corrected herself, and climbed over the edge.

"Nina?" Mandy took a step back, astonished.

"Don't talk to me!" she beseeched, her speech small and muffled. Erik and Mandy exchanged startled glances. Mandy found she had nothing to say; her clever and witty repartee wouldn't serve her now.

Mandy hesitantly ascended to the upper bunk. She rested her elbows on the ledge, propping her chin where they crossed. Nina had worked her way into the corner; her legs pulled securely against her chest, her face pressed into the dip between her knees. Her arms enveloped her torso as she shook with silent tears.

Mandy eased her weight onto the bunk and crawled over to her sister, uncertain.

"Nina?" she asked gently, placing one of her hands on her sister's knees. Nina flinched. Mandy quickly removed her hand. "Sissy?" she queried, employing the nickname she called Nina when they were little. Deciding that no response was better than a bad one, Mandy further approached her older sister.

Mandy insecurely wrapped an arm around her big sister. Nina wordlessly lifted her head and stared desperately at Mandy, before resting her head on Mandy's shoulder. Mandy hesitantly stroked her hair, repeatedly tucking the same strand behind her ear—a motion their mother always preformed when either of them were upset.

"_We're here where the daylight begins... The fog on the streetlight slowly thins... Water on water's the way... The safety of shoreline fading away…Sail your sea… Meet your storm… All I want is to be your harbor._" Mandy sang softly as tears leaked from Nina's eyes, praying that her actions were doing something.

* * *

**Disclaimer:** STILL NOT MINE. I PROMISE.

**A/N:** So... the rating has officially been bumped to M. In one chapter. Oh well... Well, the story will be getting progressively darker. I'm warning you now. I would write a longer author's note, but it's 1:40 in the morning and I'm quite tired, LOL. But ask me whatever in a review and I'll answer it, as long as it doesn't lead to me spoiling my plot. :]

The lyrics from this chapter, as well as the chapter's title, are from Vienna Teng's "Harbor." Go listen to it. You know you wanna...

Props to Lauren, who listened to me bitch about how much I hate writing angst for hours on end, and helped me turn this into some semblance of creative writing. ILU LAUREN!!


	4. Chapter Three

**Chapter Three: A Flower Trying to Bloom in Snow**

* * *

Sig Hansen threw another duffle bag into the back of the truck. The decision to set sail was an unspoken, yet unanimous one. But they couldn't be hasty about this. They needed to be prepared. They were going into this blind. So in a flurry of bodies and mixed thoughts, the four elder Hansen's had quickly made the necessary preparations in order to set sail.

Louise, ever the logical one, had explained the situation to the police, who had in return explained the situation to the Coast Guard. There wasn't much the Coast Guard could do if Bondevik had taken them out of US waters, but the police sergeant in charge had given his veiled approval of the Hansen's performing their own search aboard the Northwestern, which, Sig had darkly concluded, was what Bondevik probably wanted anyway.

They had also given them a firm promise that they would find out not only how Bondevik had escaped federal authorities, but why the Hansen's hadn't been notified.

He shifted to the side as June silently heaved another bag into the back of the pick-up. She had barely spoken since phone call. He was the sort of man who could sincerely claim that he knew his wife extremely well, but despite this fact he could only grasp at air at what was currently going on in her mind. They hadn't spoken about Bondevik in twenty-two years. He had been convicted and sentenced to sixty years in prison, and that was it. Alek Bondevik had been forgotten, a horrible part of their past. He had nothing to do with their present or future.

Sig watched June curiously as she evaded eye contact with him. She wordlessly went back into the house for another bag.

They were filled with things he'd never remember they'd need, especially with his current lack of sleep and minor hangover. Sig Hansen's ability to go three days without sleep had evaporated; he was more than physically exhausted—he felt like he might break down at any moment. He knew what Bondevik was capable of, and it made him feel so powerless.

"June?" he called after her. She barely paused, only a miniscule hesitation in her step, before continuing. "June!" he said again, startled that she didn't answer him. She stopped in the middle of the driveway.

"What?" she asked shortly. Her voice sounded like she was either angry or close to tears. Or both, Sig supposed. She flinched as he placed a hand on her waist. Sig furrowed his brows.

"Juna..." he whispered, standing behind her, wrapping both arms around her midsection. He knew what she was doing. "Don't get lost, elskede." She relaxed against him.

"I just... I can't think. I don't want to. I know... I know what he can do. What he's done. And if I think about it..." she couldn't finish the sentence; it had too many possibilities, and none of them were particularly appeasing. "I won't think about it."

But she already had.

She had already remembered every time he hit her, or struck her, or purposely done something to terrify her. Every time she'd been thrown out of her apartment, every time she gave herself stitches, every time she covered a bruise with makeup or hid a limp by walking extra carefully.

She covered Sig's hands with her own and closed her eyes in a useless attempt to keep the tears from overflowing. She felt her husband drop a kiss into her hair and rest his chin on the top of her head. They stood like that, in the early hours before dawn, for several minutes, paying no heed to the fact that they were in the middle of their driveway. If she didn't know better, she could have sworn that she was twenty-two again.

It seemed so much darker than any other night. The stars almost looked like they had stopped shining.

Finding no other means to distract himself with, Sig closed his eyes, and had to deliberately keep his breathing steady. He had always liked the smell of his wife's shampoo—sure, it had changed multiple, well, several times since he had started taking the time to notice such things, but she always smelled nice. Coming home after months on a fishing boat to her floral and clean scented perfume was always refreshing.

He missed her when he was gone.

Sig and June Hansen lost track of time.

* * *

"There isn't even toilet paper. Lovely." Mandy's sarcasm created a small ripple in tense silence between the sisters. Nina sat quietly on the toilet lid, staring straight forward as Mandy went through the cabinets in the tiny bathroom that was adjoined to the stateroom. Mandy glanced at Nina, hoping for a response. There was none. Mandy crouched down to open the lower cabinet under the sink and unearthed a roll of yellowed paper towels. She held them up. "At least there are paper towels. How old? I have no clue. But they'll serve their purpose all the same."

Any other time, Nina would have poked fun at the antiquity of Mandy's language. When she didn't, Mandy was unsure how to proceed.

"Um, well..." Mandy tore one stiff piece off from the roll and wet it under the stream of unclear water now pouring from the spout. She tried to force it into Nina's hands, which remained limp and unmoving, folded demurely in her lap.

Nina looked sickly pale. The tears had ceased, but her eyes were as red as a Christmas tree ornament and her face was swollen. Her normally perfect hair and makeup were mussed; eyeliner and mascara were in black streaks down her face, and her flaxen hair had lost all of its life and body, and instead hung in clumped locks to her shoulders. She looked like a little girl who had wandered away from her mother in the supermarket.

Mandy bit the inside of her cheek insecurely. She would have to take care of her sister. Nina had taken care of her more than once, Mandy reminded herself as she tried to keep those horrible memories from resurfacing. She could do the same. She more than owed her.

Mandy squatted in front of her sister and lifted her delicate chin with one hand, and began blotting her face with the other. All of Nina's features were delicate. Nina had always been, in Mandy's opinion, the pretty sister—a delicate rose. She had escaped almost all of the harsh Nordic features that had been bequeathed to Mandy. Nina had a symmetrical heart-shaped face, with beautiful distinguished cheekbones, set high in her face. Her nose was long and pointed; straight as an arrow where it met at the tip.

Her eyes were almond shaped, and expressed her feelings; they would light up when she laughed, smile when she smiled, reflect a mischievous glint whenever she was planning something. At the moment, however, her eyes revealed nothing of the emotions swirling around in their depths.

They were a light cerulean, a genuine cross between their mother's stormy grayish-blue and their father's sky blue.

People always said that Nina's features borrowed mostly from their mother's, while Mandy's were more of their father's. Mandy had several of the hallmark Nordic features—the stern brow, defined jaw line, flat cheekbones. If Nina was the rose, then Mandy was the briar.

Her eyes and lips were the other things that could clearly be defined as feminine; her eyes were gently set in her face, almost deliberately set in contrast of the rest of her bold features, fringed with layers of dark lashes that other girls coveted. Her lips were full and the perfect length and a faded dusty pink.

However, her brash personality usually counteracted any attractiveness of those features. But Nina owned up to her rose-personality. She was nice, and sympathetic. Miss Congeniality and Miss America; teaches loved her (as evidenced by the fact that more than half of Mandy's teachers regularly accidently called her 'Nina') and her friends loved her. She was witty, clever and always did her homework. She knew when to shut up. She never got in trouble.

She wore skinny jeans and ballet flats and lace-trimmed cardigans. Her hair was always done and her makeup was always perfect. She had cute head-bands and looked fabulous in her gym-clothes. She was the captain of the soccer team, the power forward.

Mandy: Mandy was the briar. She wore boot cut jeans with rips in them and converse. Her hair was however it dried, and while she liked makeup, what she wore was minimal, or whatever she could get on in the time she had in the morning. She was more often than not wearing a sweatshirt.

She was crude and talked too much and didn't pay attention in math and spent most of that time writing or doodling in her notebook. She played sweeper on the field hockey team and was an awful runner. She played the bass in orchestra but sang first soprano.

Mandy finished wiping the black mess from her older sister's face. Mandy gave her sister a dubious kiss on the forehead. They were both exhausted and had no idea what they were doing.

Nina gave up a weak, watery smile and Mandy looked into her sister's eyes and the shade of blue identical to her own.

"Alright?" Mandy whispered. Mandy knew she wasn't, but Nina would say she was anyway.

Nina nodded, wiping her eyes. Mandy easily fell back into her usual role of little sister. Nina wrapped her arms around Mandy, and didn't need to tell her thank you. Mandy would know. Sometimes, Mandy wondered if the only thing they had in common was where they came from.

Maybe it was enough.

* * *

They were leaving Puget Sound by daybreak at a desperate full throttle. They had enough gas to go full throttle all the way to St. Paul Island if need be. After a hasty phone call and an even hastier explanation, Norman had unquestioningly met the four adults at the dock, ready to do whatever it took to get his nieces and nephews back.

The Northwestern had been stocked with anything they thought they could possibly need—at least a month's worth of food (a stop at A&P at five in the morning to quickly grab a large assortment of non-perishables), several first aid kits, spare clothing, spare clothing, sheets, blankets, pillows, and much more gasoline than normally required. _Semper Paratus_… or, rather, one of June's frequent expressions: luck favors the prepared—and luck was pretty much all they had.

So, with a short radio conference with a sleepy harbor master and without ceremony, the Northwestern left port.

Originally, the five adults all sat, or stood, being there wasn't extensive seating, in the wheelhouse, looking out the windows, watching. There was no conversation, just a determined silence. One by one, they disappeared downstairs, June finally admitting the fact that she couldn't go anymore without sleep, and Louise following her less than a half an hour later.

Norman quietly decided that he should check on the engine to make sure everything would be alright—there had been work done earlier in the summer but since she had been dry-docked from April to July, he needed to make sure. So as the sun began to rise in the sky, Sig sat pensively in his captain's chair as Edgar sat contemplatively in the co-captains chair across the room, staring out the portside window.

Everyone once in a while, as he pushed his boat to the maximum of her capabilities, Sig would glance inconspicuously over at his little brother and would find him, over and over again, emotionlessly studying the great expanse of blue around them.

One thing that Bondevik had said was gnawing at him, constantly at the forefront of his mind. He couldn't stop thinking about it.

_You didn't mean to exclude your niece and nephews, right, Hansen? Little brother wouldn't be too happy about that. Although, you've always been very 'every man for himself,' haven't you._

_Haven't I? _He thought. He'd certainly looked out for number one—and then, when the time came, number one's family—for most of his life. He preached about family and morals and values but everyday watched Edgar habitually follow his orders, without question. Edgar had always mindlessly followed what he asked him to do, ever since they were children. Did it simply never occur to Edgar that he could be wrong? Or that he had a motive that wasn't in Edgar's best interest?

All he had been thinking about since the previous night was how he was going to get Nina and Mandy back, how he was going to keep this from tearing June apart. He had never once thought of Erik or Stefani or Logan, or how this was affecting Edgar or Louise. What kind of older brother was he?—to never question once how his little brother was holding up. They'd barely talked since it happened.

Had he always been this way and never noticed? Sure, he'd taken care of Edgar several times; stitched him up several times, ascertained that he was physically alright. But what about when he was affected too?

He struggled to remember the dark days following their father's passing: receiving the news at the docks, the flurry of the viewing, the funeral, the burial. He remembered leaning heavily on June, and his mother leaning heavily on him, and he remembered thinking that he was the head of the family now—captain of the ship—but had he taken the time for either of his brothers?

_Haven't I? _Did he? He looked over at Edgar again, who was, as he had been for the past few hours, staring impassively out the window.

It was really starting to bother Sig.

"Ed...Am I...that's to say...Haven't I been...I mean...I'm a...Erik and Stef and Logan...But...I haven't...I..." He struggled to find the appropriate words, let alone find the courage, to finish one of his thoughts. Sig had never fully mastered the ability to voice his emotions.

Edgar looked at him with a strange face. "What the hell are you trying to ask me?"

Sig took a breath. "I... um, well: Have I beenagoodolderbrothertoyou?" his last seven words came out in a nervous flood, melding together into fewer syllables than they should have been.

Edgar didn't answer right away, and Sig looked anxiously at his little brother out of the corner of his eye; Edgar had a peculiar look on his face as he studied his brother, a combination of dawning realization and astonishment. Sig bit his lip. After a careful study of thirty-five years he had concluded that silence was never a good response from Edgar Hansen.

Edgar watched his brother cautiously. He had seen Sig in a large assortment of emotions and reactions, but had never seen him so rattled or doubting of himself. Did he really think he was the 'evil older son' he had once referred to himself as?

Edgar opened and closed his mouth a few times before finally speaking, as if he was unsure of what to say or how to say it. He finally settled on: "Sig. I trust you."

Maybe that was enough.

With those words, they descended into a companionable silence.

* * *

"_**Severe storm advisory for the Gulf of Alaska—winds reaching up to 60 knots, seas 40 feet—ETA 1300 hours. Severe storm advisory for the Gulf of Alaska..."**_

* * *

**Disclaimer:** STILL NOT MINE. THINGS THAT ARE MINE: Alek Bondevik, the boat they're being held captive on which has a name, I promise you, and... that's about it.

**A/N:** Sorry about the lack of length, but this really is a transition chapter. However, the storm warning at the end promises drama. Much drama will be in the next... well, the rest of the story, really. So consider this a deep breath before sprinting an 800 or something. Thank Lauren, aka Mahone-Chic-89, for her help with this chapter, because the Edgar/Sig segment was so difficult. Stupid men and their lack of ability to express emotions like women do, LOL.

Also, there's some foreshadowing/hinting at things in this chapter. Just letting you know...

And yes, there are Norwegian terms of endearment, LMAO.

**Other possible chapter titles:** "Chapter Three: In which Emily forces character development down your throat," "Chapter Three: Could this get any more gross with all the family cuteness?" and "Chapter Three: Emily really needs to stop with Vienna Teng-related chapter titles."

The chapter title is a lyric taken from the Vienna Teng's "The Tower." LOL.

REVIEW, PLZ!!


	5. Chapter Four

**Chapter Four: Turn Out the Lights**

* * *

"What time?" Edgar asked, leaning over Sig to look at the radar, his voice serious and unnaturally calm.

"_**Severe storm advisory for the Gulf of Alaska—winds reaching up to 60 knots, seas 40 feet—ETA 1300 hours. Sever storm advisory for the Gulf of Alaska..."**_

The Coast Guard announcement played again as if to answer his question. "Jesus..." he muttered. "One o'clock."

"Five hours." Sig whispered, pointing at the edge of where the storm hypothetically was on the radar. He added darkly: "Don't worry Ed. Bondevik knows what he's doing."

Did he know what he was doing by taking them the day before a huge storm? Or: "He... knows how to steer a boat through a storm?"

"I should say so." Sig muttered. Edgar gave his brother a calculating stare, waiting for him to further explain. "His father was the captain of the _Obsession_. When Bondevik's father died in '95 and it went to him, but he was obviously in jail... so they stopped fishing."

Edgar didn't want to press Sig for information, but did anyway. He needed peace of mind just as much as Sig did. "So that's where..."

"Where our kids are, yes. If I remember correctly she's probably not up to code and hasn't been out of the Locks since the mid-nineties. Bastard..." Edgar pursed his lips, physically attempting to keep himself from responding. He was unsure. Sig's mind was going down a road that led nowhere optimism could thrive, and if he tried to pull him out of it, Edgar was pretty sure Sig would just snap at him.

Instead, they both continued to study the radar as the warning played over and over again on the radio.

* * *

Mandy led Nina out of the bathroom and back into the stateroom. Erik was sitting on the lower bunk of the two beds, slouched uncomfortably in the confined space. Logan and Stefani leaned into him on either side. His arms were wrapped securely around them. Logan had fallen asleep again; Stefani looked like she was trying to—her eyes would occasionally flutter open or she would adjust herself slightly against the hard meeting of the bunk and the wood-paneled wall.

Mandy screamed as the door burst open and jumped to position her body in front of Nina's. Nina grabbed her sister's arm and pulled her back, her form hitting the solid barrier of the bed. Nina attempted to pull Mandy behind her, but Mandy had ground herself to her spot, crouched slightly, arms off to her sides.

This time there was no hesitation or sarcastic commentary. The man would find no humor in the girls' motions. Instead, he charged into the room, his large presence immediately known and feared. One huge hand wrapped around the hood of Mandy's sweatshirt and the other grabbed at Nina's forearm. In shock, Nina relented as he began to drag her again out of the room, her mind replaying the last time it had occurred, the recent memories playing back in full color and high definition. She could feel the bruise beginning to form across her lower back.

The man kicked the door to the stateroom shut with a loud thud.

Mandy, however, dug her feet into the cheap carpet unrelentingly, her worn converses providing enough friction for the man to have to stop momentarily in order to re-grip to the junction of where her arm met socket to lift her up off the ground, her toes skimming the floor in order to maintain her balance. Mandy grit her teeth and swung out, attempting to make the man lose his.

Reaching the galley, he effortlessly threw Nina, who was still in shock, into a second stateroom that was significantly larger and contained only one bed—clearly the captain's quarters, but pushed Mandy into the booth seating of the galley table so hard that as Mandy's head hit the corner of the table, white spots crept into the corners of her vision.

Recovering hastily, she heaved herself up into a sitting position as the man's hulking form began to enter the other stateroom. Her head was in agony, a shooting pain cycling from her neck to behind her ears to her eyes and back to her neck,

Mandy remembered her sister's face just as vividly as Nina was remembering what had happened to her the last time the man had pulled her out of the stateroom.

_Fuck, no. _She thought, jumping up. "Get the hell away from my sister!" she shouted as Nina's eyes went wide and her posture shrunk in terror; the quintessential dear-caught-in-the-headlights.

Through her fear, Nina felt a surge of sisterly affection which quickly gave way to chastisement for her sister's stupidity as the man, angered, turned to face her.

"What did you say, you skinny little bitch?" he questioned calmly, his stature and body language revealing his rage. Mandy suddenly understood how David felt when he was slinging stones at Goliath.

She steeled herself. "You heard me. Don't touch her!" One.

"_Don't touch her!" the well-built, broad-chested blond man seethed, stepping in front of the blonde woman. "She told you to leave!" _

"_Get the fuck out of my face, Hansen." The other man rebuked, bracing for attack; his shoulders hunched and muscles tensed. The blond man froze, sensing the reality of the danger in the situation. He wrapped a strong hand around the blonde woman's wrist, and pulled her close enough to whisper in her ear as she watched the altercation with wide, frightful stormy eyes. _

"_Go!" he whispered. She didn't move. "Run!" He pushed her back as the man advanced them. She looked at him, terrified and revering. _

"_But you'll—"_

"_I can handle him! Just go!" _

"I'm not in your face, you retard." Mandy bit back, mildly confused but determinately keeping up her bravado. Two. Nina eyed her sister and the man with fear as he began to rush Mandy instead of Nina.

"Mandy!" Nina cried as the man threw the door of the stateroom shut. Mandy realized the depths of her stupidity as the man, now sporting a crooked grin, began skulking over to her.

"Mandy!" Nina screamed through the door, banging her fists futilely against it.

Mandy crumpled to the ground at the man's first swing at her face. Her body collapsed onto the galley table as she lost balance, dizzy and disoriented as her vision swam with purple spots. Blood was pounding a steady rhythm in her head. "Shit..." she hissed as she swiped her hand under her nose and found it covered in warm blood. There was a sharp, shooting pain in-between her eyes. She could barely breathe, "Shit!" She brought her sleeve up to her face to staunch the bleeding.

"Get up." The man commanded, but gave her no time to do so, grabbing at her arm as he effortlessly heaved her off the table. Mandy missed a step as the room spun. Tripping over her own feet, she fell and the man let go of her. Blood continued to pour out of her nose, and the sight, smell, and taste of it was making her sick to her stomach.

_Mandy Hansen: a girl who needs to learn when to shut up, _she mused angrily as she attempted to hold her gag reflex in.

"I said _get up_, bitch."

Mandy rolled over and weakly attempted to prop herself up on her forearms. Her shoulders gave out. Her blood was now on the carpet of the galley. Mandy closed her eyes as her entire body hit the floor. Her head was throbbing, her face was on fire and her stomach was turning itself inside out as her senses, hyper acute, went haywire with all of the pain coursing through her veins. Her nerve endings tingled and went numb, and Mandy lost all feeling in her hands and feet.

"_Get. Up." _

"I—I can't," she moaned, curling her feet up to her chest and gingerly moving onto her side. Three. She wanted to sleep... she wanted to sleep...

"_I—I can't," the blonde woman muttered, barely audible to the blond man. "I can't leave you here, with him." _

_The brown-haired man felt anger sprinting through him, building in his belly as he saw them, together. He raised his fists, enraged. The blond man pushed her back again, towards the door of The Elbow Room. "Go. Get help. This ends now. You can't stay here—we're getting the first flight out of Dutch in the morning." _

"_How cute." The brown-haired man grit through his teeth, "but you forgot one thing, she's my woman." _

"_She doesn't belong to anyone." _

"Bullshit." The man leaned over her, examining her, probing her with his eyes. Mandy curled into herself even tighter as her nausea surged.

"Get away from me..." she groaned lightly with no conviction. Four. What could she throw up anyway? She hadn't eaten since lunch yesterday, if you counted French fries and water lunch, anyway.

"What did you say to me?" he demanded, rolling her harshly onto her back. Mandy's response was an inarticulate grumble as she wrapped both of her arms around her midsection.

"_What did you say to me?" the brown-haired man growled, his icy eyes glowing, watching the blonde woman as she stumbled in the deep snow, running back to the bar. She would glance back at the two of them, her eyes brimming with concern for the blond man. _

"_She doesn't belong to anyone, Bondevik. She'll be out in a minute—so if you want to take a swing at me, you better do it now." _

_The brown-haired man swung back before shifting all of his weight to his front feet, his right fist flying towards the other man's face. The blond man ducked and tackled the other around the waist, bringing him to the ground. "You'll never hurt her again, Alek," he bit as he aimed for the brown-haired man's face. _

Tears leaked from Mandy's eyes as the man delivered a swift, hard kick to her abdomen. She sniffled, only to inhale her own blood. Mandy held back a ferocious cough as she flipped herself over to dry heave against the floor, which only, in the end, transformed into a hacking cough. Blood spewed from her mouth.

Faintly, Mandy could her sister shrieking her name and beating, uselessly, against the door.

Nina's name was her last conscious thought.

The world went black.

Five.

* * *

Bondevik scrutinized the girl's prone form, bloodied and pale—and unmoving—resting on the galley floor. Her pale hair was dyed by the copper of her blood. Her alabaster skin was tinged blue. Her nose was definitely broken. Her previously straight nose was starting to swell, the purple and black bruise spreading out from under her brow and across to her eyes.

He surveyed the damage, using the tip of his boot to move her face towards the light.

"MANDY!" the other girl—Nina—he remembered, was still screeching from the stateroom. So annoying,.,

"Shut up!" he yelled, throwing up his hands. Her protests died, the room suddenly quiet. He would have left it there, had the idea of saying something else, something tormenting to the girl hadn't occurred to him. "Your precious little sister is _dead_."

There was several moments of startled silence followed by the sound of, from what Bondevik could presume, a body hitting the door and sliding down to the floor. This noise was proceeded by an ungodly wail.

Bondevik winced. He could never stand crying. Whenever Junie would start he would just kick her out of the house. He appraised the girl's disfigured face. Mandy's face, from what he could gather from her sister's shrieking.

He curled his lip in disgust. Mandy's features were inherently her father's. _Just like her over-inflated hero complex_, Bondevik noted sarcastically. He observed the crimson stains that were sprayed across the carpet. He couldn't leave her here.

Bondevik stooped down and slung the girl over one of his developed shoulders. He turned a corner in the narrow hallway, not caring as Mandy's head hit the wall. Palming the door knob with one hand, he pushed the door to the engine room open.

With one graceful movement, he threw her body down the steps, not even looking as she hit the floor, limbs splayed awkwardly and unnaturally. He emotionlessly closed and locked the door.

* * *

Mandy returned to herself at a pained crawl.

Her head felt like, in the most basic words possible, like someone had run over it with her father's pickup truck. Repeatedly. Her lips her parted gently and were dry and cracked. Mandy tried to breathe through her nose, but was only met with a surge of pain, Her one free hand, the other was trapped under her body and while not having quite the strength to move either at the moment, remained in place, flew to her face as Mandy gingerly inspected her nose.

There was a huge bump where there had not been a huge bump before.

"Lovely." Mandy groaned, her voice having the same qualities as a person with a severe cold. Everything hurt or throbbed, or in some cases, both.

She was so dizzy... she felt the room spinning around her like some tilt-a-whirl from hell as she attempted to sit up. Her muscles giving out, she slumped back to the floor. Tense and broken, she shifted her limbs into more comfortable positions. She cracked her eyes open.

She was in an engine room. She had been in the Northwestern's a couple of times, generally bringing her father more coffee or lunch or something. Enough to know.

Mandy groaned again, and tried to roll herself over. The floor was damp, seawater dripping steadily from a broken valve five feet away from her face. Mandy concluded that the room wasn't spinning—the boat was rolling harder than it had been earlier.

_Just when exactly was earlier? _She wondered. How long had she been down here? Where was Nina? "I'm so stupid," she grumbled, barely finding the energy to push herself into an upright position. "That's right Mandy; provoke the guy who's holding you hostage. That's smart."

She stopped talking after that, the nausea returning. She couldn't tell if it was seasickness or from her head. She didn't care enough to hazard a guess. What did it matter where it came from? She was nauseous.

_I always thought it was funny how you can't spell nausea without "sea," _she laughed sickly to herself, leaning back against the sloping steel wall of the hull.

She couldn't tell what direction they were going in even if she tried.

She braced herself against the wall as the boat lurched violently, Mandy's stomach following in suit. _Keep yourself together, Hansen_,she chided herself sardonically.

_This certainly isn't the Love Boat. _

* * *

**Disclaimer: **Do I really have to? Do you really think I own them? Really?

**A/N: **Sorry it took me five million years to update. I just went back to school and real life took over. I promise it won't take this long to update again, but with all the hubub of moving in, getting settled, welcome week, starting of class... I had no time. Bah.

**The numbers: **In the biblical story of David and Goliath, David slung five stones at Goliath before he went down. If you don't know the story of David and Goliath... go wikipedia it.

See that fun button that says "review"? CLICK IT. WRITE ME SOMETHING. Reviews make the skipper happy, and when the skipper's happy, the crew's happy. :]


	6. Chapter Five

**Chapter Five: The Talented Miss Mandy Hansen**

* * *

"Fuck… fuckfuckfuck. Ow." Mandy closed her eyes tightly and tunneled her slender hands through her hair. She couldn't focus. It hurt to think. The pain continued to cycle from the back of her neck, to her forehead, and to the backs of her eyes. Her sight was tinged with purple spots. But it ebbed and flowed, and maybe if the nausea went away, it would be manageable.

The boat was rocking harder than ever, occasionally pitching enough to send Mandy tumbling across the floor. Head in her hands, she examined the peeling paint on the floor. Tan on top of green on top of blue giving way to a bottom layer of grey. One hand left her hair, and she used it to chip some more paint off the floor.

The pain in her head surged. "Fuck!" she cried. The boat rolled hard to starboard. Mandy had barely enough time to flip herself around as her stomach gave up, the contents of her stomach pushing up against her throat. She braced herself against the wall with one arm, while the other engaged in tugging her blonde hair back out of her face.

Tears began streaming down her face as her retches subsided to dry heaves. What was she going to do? What could she do? Why her? Why her family?

"Nina…" she cried, crawling away from her vomit and curling into herself. What had he done to her? Was she alright? What about her cousins? Her parents? Uncle Edgar and Aunt Louise? Who was this guy—some deluded fan? She knew her father had some crazies who liked to follow him around at events—did he think he could get money from them?

_He probably could_, Mandy reasoned. She boat pitched again, this time to port. Mandy found that she was no longer queasy. She tugged the sleeves of her father's sweatshirt up over her hands, and used it to wipe the tears from her face.

She could almost hear Uncle Edgar. "Suck it up, buttercup," she muttered to herself, laughing darkly. Her head was pounding. Blood throbbed in her ears. Regardless, she stood up, the motion shaky and awkward, for she did not have her sea legs yet (not that she had ever really had them, but she felt as the daughter of a fishermen it would be a shame if she didn't).

She flipped a mental switch. Now was not the time to be passive.

She eased herself over to the iron stairs leading to the galley, keeping her arms aloft in an attempt to retain her balance. She grasped the rail as the boat was bombarded by another wave. She smiled darkly. "I am Mandy Hansen, hear me roar."

She paused, waiting for Nina's retort. She froze, realizing there wouldn't be one. Instead, she provided it herself. "Mandy, _really_?"

Another tear escaped her eye. Mandy brushed it away immediately. "Alright… how am I going to make this work? What do I know how to do?"

She glanced around. How many times had she been in the _Northwestern_'s engine room? Like two, three times, tops? And holy crap it was loud. She looked around. There had to be ear-things somewhere. Locating them looped over the railing, she secured them on her aching head, the returned to the task in hand.

"So nothing engine related. Awesome." Something was building up inside her. The fear was still present, still weighing her down. But there was something else: there was hope. The pain cycled again, and Mandy had to keep herself from losing her balance. She clutched tightly to the railing. She rallied. "Don't want to blow us up."

She peered around. "What can I do?"

_I'm good with computers…_ she admitted to herself. "And circuits." She had taught herself how to fix her computer the third time she blew it up from excessive gaming. "What needs an electrical circuit?"

Maybe if she redirected the electricity, she could get Nina's attention. Get into the hardwiring for the stateroom that he put her in. Morse code, maybe. Mandy rolled her eyes at her own idea. "Who the fuck knows Morse code now-a-days? Great. A bunch of blinking lights. I'm sure Nina would understand that perfectly. 'Lassie, Timmy's stuck at the bottom of a well?'"

Purple spots clouded her vision. "Nina, Mandy's stuck in the engine room! Which is only helpful if she can get out from where she is, which is doubtful." Mandy launched into a full-blown rant as she tried to locate the ship's main line. Every couple of seconds, she would hold her eyes shut to clear her sight.

She froze at one point in the wall. "Hello." She grinned, and tapped her finger on it. "Radio detection and ranging…" Radar.

Maybe, just maybe… if the _Northwestern_ was out on the water, which she probably was…

"I could send decoy transmissions. If they're paying attention, which they probably are, Dad's so fucking neurotic, thank the Lord… send a message. But how? Ghosting? I'd need to reconfigure the drive, and I doubt I could get anything lettered sent from here. I'd need a keyboard…" Mandy thought aloud to herself. The vessel pitched hard to port. Mandy caught herself against the wall.

Spotting a hammer a few feet away, she grabbed it and swung her weight back towards the box.

Mandy, being a self-proclaimed geek with too much time on her hands, was her Technology teacher's favorite student. Radar was simple enough to understand, but she wasn't sure if she could pull off something the _military_ did to run covert operations.

"Then again, I doubt this guy's intelligence," she muttered to herself. Gripping the hammer tightly, she aimed it at the seam of the box's opening and whipped the narrow edge of the tool at it. The vibration of the action reverberated up her arm painfully. She shook it off, the hammer lodged in the juncture of the face and top of the metal casing of the radar's electrical system. "Maybe he wouldn't notice something small."

Now clutching the handle with both hands, she leaned her weight towards, pushing off with all the force she could conjure in her thighs.

"Come on…"

She sunk lower, positioning the hammer above her right shoulder, and pushed up. She shrieked as the boat rolled, her footing lost.

The screws holding the box together screamed from tension, then popped. Mandy jammed her fingers in the crease and wrenched it open.

"Fuck yes," she hissed, worrying her bottom lip between her teeth as she smiled. She let the front of the box hit the floor, not even registering the metallic _clang_ that it emitted as it did. She couldn't hear the sound, but felt it beneath her toes.

She ran her fingers over the wires in all their casings—Black for hot, white for hot, green for ground, blue for—additional line? What? She followed its path from the main circuit. Her fingers were short, and almost flat. Several had been broken and had an amount of crookedness to them. Her fingernails were short and unpainted; her cuticles chewed to the quick.

"Oh my fucking God." She beamed, her smile stretched so wide her cheek muscles were straining. "DRFM."

Digital radio frequency memory. Any idiot—or psychopathic kidnapper—could buy one at Radio Shack. He'd been jamming the radar!

"So what?" she questioned, now picking the small plastic piece and its attached cables out of the jumble. She squinted as she examined it, being careful not to tug too hard and pull it out of the line, and to cause the entire system to go down. "We've been transmitting we've been in dock the entire time?"

She sighed. "Highly plausible." She answered her own question. She pushed what she had of a thumbnail into the crease of the x of the screw holding the DRFM together, and worked it, trying to get it to twist around. She got the one small screw out, then set out to work on the other.

"Shit!" She gasped, swept off her feet as the boat rocked forty-five degrees to port. She struggled to exhale, pushing the heels of her palms into her eyes as the ache in her head surged from the sudden extreme motion, the pain centering between her eyes. Her broken nose throbbed. She coughed out a curse in Norwegian, and moaned.

"Now I sound like Dad…" she observed out loud to no one. Steadying her breathing, she hoisted herself up again. Like a buoy rocketing to the surface, her nausea returned. Overcome by the sudden sensation, she wrapped her arms around her midsection, bent in half, and emptied the watery contents of her stomach. Coughing, she groaned, the noise rattling up her throat. "Gross…"

Mandy staggered back to the wall, wiping away the cold sweat that had broken out across her brow. Pursing her brow, she set back to work.

_**

* * *

**_

"Severe storm advisory for the Gulf of Alaska—winds reaching up to 60 knots, seas 40 feet—ETA 1300 hours. Severe storm advisory for the Gulf of Alaska..."

Bondevik smiled, hand palming the throttle gently as the _Obsession _crested another wave. His smile grew even wider as the insignia promising the location of the _Northwestern_ popped up on the far corner of the computer screen that was functioning in part with his radar. They were catching up… they were almost a hundred miles away but…

This was going exactly as he wanted it. The storm could be considered an extra bonus, but if God was going to bequeath him another method of deriving pain from the Hansen's, then well, he wasn't going to complain.

He cackled, laughter reverberating through the bare-bones wheelhouse. The bow dipped as he managed the vessel over the swollen sea.

Yup, he had them right where he wanted them.

His eyes grazed the radar in glee and his gaze was caught by something flickering on the screen. "What the—fuck?!" The _Obsession_ solidified on the screen, coordinates inscribed neatly below the symbol. Bondevik worked his jaw, the bones of his temple gliding under his skin.

Rage quickly built up inside him as he possessively gripped the jog stick. "Whore!" he yelled, thrusting it forward and jerkily abandoning the captain's chair. "That little fucker!" Tearing his sights away from the computer, he thundered down the stairs and towards the engine room, the boat left to bob helplessly in the increasingly violent seas.

* * *

"Hey—hey, Ed!" Sig called excitedly.

Edgar jumped. "What?!"

"Come here, look!" he called, almost falling out of his chair. "Look , the radar is—."

"—Picking up a fishing vessel named the—named the _Obsession_."

The_ Northwestern_ immediately adjusted her course.

* * *

Mandy looked at the prized piece of electrical equipment in her hand, rubbing the blue casing of the wire between her fingers in a pointless attempt to straighten it out, a grinning stretching out across her features. She had done it!

And if her parents were out on the sea—God, she hoped they were, or someone, anyone, really—then maybe they could be found!

The boat pitched dangerously to the stern, and she felt her feet slip out from under her, and in less than a second, Mandy gracelessly found herself on her ass, the water streaming on the floor soaking the seat of her jeans.

"Oh you have got to be kidding me!" she cried, throwing the DRFM box onto the floor. "I'm cold, my nose is broken, my face is turning purple, I puked, my head hurts and now I'm _wet_! Oh fuck it all!"

Mandy heard the door at the top of the steps burst open, the noise barely relevant over the cacophony of whirs and grumbles from the engines.

_Fuck. Fuckfuckfuckohfuckinghell—guess he noticed!_ Fight or flight wasn't even an option: he was too much bigger than she and even if she got past him, she had nowhere to run. Her brain cells reached a general consensus: hide. Mandy's eyes widened in fear as she propelled herself backwards, positioning herself under the metal steps.

She peeled off the headset and scuttled backwards and into the shadows, crouching under the gridded metal steps and, hopefully, out of sight. She squatted and braced herself under the most bottom steps she could squeeze under, curling a trembling hand around the steel column designed to keep the staircase upright.

Every step Bondevick took down the steps reverberated in the bones of her hand. She could feel her heart leaping in her chest like a gazelle, skittish and light, trying to escape from under her breast.

God, her head hurt.

His feet landed heavily as he thundered down the steps. One step from the top, one step closer, one step, one step—he was directly above her; Mandy's grip tightened on the column and her knuckles turned white—one step and his feet were on the floor.

Her mouth tamped shut; air circulated with pained frequency through her broken, swollen nose. He didn't move. Mandy's entire frame vibrated in terror.

Was he going to kill her? He must have noticed what she was doing with the radar. Was he going to kill her—or was she of better use to him alive? Did it even matter? Why did he want them to begin with?

One question burned brighter than the rest: who was this man?

He was deranged, out of touch with reality; of that much she was certain—why wasn't he moving?! _OhGod Oh God OhGodOhGodOhGodOH-MY-GOD_ her heart beat against her chest. Her head… she screwed her eyes shut to vanquish the spots erupting across the landscape of her vision.

When she opened her eyes, his legs were level to her face. Right in front of her. Less than two feet away.

_OhGodOhGodOhGodOhfuck. _He was going to find her and take her and kill her and she didn't know how to fight and no one would hear her screams and it didn't even matter if they did or didn't because they couldn't get to her anyway and even if they could she wouldn't want anyone to get hurt and—.

Fight or flight.

Human instinct, really.

Now or never.

She launched herself at his legs, hoping to catch him unawares and lever him off balance.

It worked. Wrapping her arms around his legs, she felt his knees buckle and his legs come out from under him. He collapsed sideways to the floor gracelessly, with a hard resounding smack that Mandy felt rather than heard; she scrambled to her feet. If she could just get to the stairs then up the stairs then to the door—.

He caught up with her as her foot landed on the third step.

Mandy screamed futilely as he wrestled his arms around her waist. Her sneaker-clad foot slipped off the top of the step and swung uselessly in the air as she thrashed about; kicking her legs in any direction they would go. She clawed at his hands, desperately attempting to thrust them off.

She continued screaming as he whipped her around and let go, dropping her off the staircase and to the floor. Her heart raced as she managed to catch the railing with one hand, awkwardly landing on her feet, one ankle turning in at a precarious angle. Adrenaline soared through her veins as her ankle buzzed faintly with pain. Struggling for breath, she looked up at him.

Bondevick's face was flushed with anger, eyes darkened with rage. He was going to kill her.

Fight or flight.

Mandy stood; captor and captive exchanged an understood conference of looks, and, ignoring her ankle, she charged him.

He caught her hands above her head and tried to lift her off her feet; she bit his arm. She drew blood. He yelled curses she couldn't hear; she swung wildly at his face. He reached for her and her fingers aimed for his eyes.

She didn't miss.

He cursed louder, above the noise level of the engine—_bitchwhoreskankfuckingbitch_—and she wildly pushed past him, feet flying over the steps. He reached blindly for her, one hand capturing her arm, jerking her backwards. She lost her balance, teetering on the corner of the rise and run of the step.

The boat pitched hard, sending them both forward. Bondevick crashed into the steps, losing his footing, both hands flung in her vicinity. Her body acting separately from her mind, she planted both hands on his shoulders, and pushed with the last vestiges of her strength.

She didn't realize what she had done until after his head thwacked against the floor and his large, crumpled form stopped moving.

Fight or flight.

Was he dead? Her eyes widened fearfully as she searched for signs of life—nothing. _Oh God_. Was he dead? Had she killed a man?

The boat listed dangerously to port, Mandy bent over the railing, catching herself.

Wait. If he was there—who was captaining the ship?!

* * *

**Disclaimer:** Mine. All mine. So is the moon.

**Author's Note:** I give you all complete license to hate me for taking this long to update. But I updated, and that's what matters, right? Er... right? But anyway, the new season of DC really got me back into writing this... so let's all cross our fingers and hope I stay inspired?

Review and I'll love you forever.


	7. Chapter Six

**Chapter Six: Søster**

* * *

Nina sat on the floor, exhausted, her eyes fixed blankly on the wall in front of her.

_Your precious little sister is __**dead**_, he had snarled; almost gleefully, in fact.

Was it true? Was Mandy—was she? Nina wiped at her eyes furiously, cuffing her sleeves over her knuckles in a fruitless attempt to dam her tears, which were running in damp, relentless tracks down her face. Mandy was her baby sister. She was supposed to protect _her_, not the other way around. And now she was—was—she couldn't bring herself to say it, let alone think it.

Mandy; ever stubborn, ever pig-headed, ever tactless.

_Yet beautiful and bright he stood, as born to rule the storm. _Mandy; beautiful and bright, born the rule the storm. She was the best of them. Mandy; ever intelligent, ever funny, ever caring; compassionate; brilliant; she could have done anything she ever wanted to.

Nina was blinded by tears.

She was the big sister.

She had allowed her _precious little sister_—she was precious, damn it—to be… to be—she was—she was—.

The deadbolt clicked open. Nina's eyes narrowed in anger, wringing the remaining tears from them. She mopped them up quickly with her sleeves. She would show him that no one messed with her baby sister. He would pay.

Gathering her composure, she stood.

Mandy flew up the steps. "Shit, oh shit." No one was at the helm. No one was driving the boat. "Screwed, screwed, and screwed—we're so screwed."

The _Obsession_ took a wave over the portside bow, tipping her dangerously forward. Mandy's buzzing ankle gave out from under her and she fell into the wall as the engine room door swung shut behind her. Catching herself against it with her elbow, she quickly recovered, speeding into the galley.

Fingering the deadbolt, she opened the door she knew Nina was behind. Nina would know what to do; she always knew what to do. The door banged open.

"Oh my God," Nina whispered, her posture melting from defensive to shocked. "You're alive!" She wasn't dead—she could think it now that it wasn't true. "How—are you okay? What's wrong?! Where—where is he?"

Mandy paid no heed to her sister's questions, instead grabbing her by the wrist and instantaneously towing her out of the stateroom and into the galley. "Mandy? What happened?" Nina's voice rose in pitch, escalating from panic. "Why are you taking me to the wheelhouse?"

Mandy hissed inaudibly as the foot connected to her injured ankle landed on the first step up. She gingerly transferred her weight onto her other leg and deliberately tried not to jostle it as she dragged Nina up the stairs.

The boat swung hard; both of them crashed into the wall, the Nina's hip colliding, rather smashing, into the railing. She palmed it with her free hand as Mandy tugged her up the final step. Nina braced herself for what she couldn't anticipate—what did their captor need them for?

What she—quite literally—stumbled upon was not at all what she expected. The wheelhouse was quiet, chilled and eerily calm, completely devoid of noise. The jogstick vacillated freely, liberated from any sort of human control. White caps were created and crashed both in the distance and near; the sea surged and swallowed the deck with the unceasing beat of the storm. The sky was cast a dark charcoal, the seas ominously inky.

Nina jumped as a monstrous wave superseded the bow, soared over the deck and crashed into the front windows.

Their captor was nowhere to be seen.

Panic raged through Nina as the unmanned vessel tossed and bobbed in the unruly Alaskan gulf. She watched Mandy tentatively approach the abandoned captain's chair. She cautiously asked, "Mandy, what happened to him?"

Mandy sat down, silently studying the controls. "Our… captain is otherwise incapacitated."

_Oh God_, Nina gaped mutely. _Did she…_ the voice in her head grew hushed, _…kill him_? "What do you mean?"

Mandy folded her hands in her lap, refusing to meet Nina's eyes. "He… I pushed him down the steps to the engine room."

"What?" Nina inquired calmly. Surely she… he was the only one who knew how to drive the boat. Now if he was… they had no one. They were doomed.

Mandy worked her hands through her knotted hair. She hesitantly explained, "He locked me in the engine room. When I came to… I thought it would be a good idea to see if I could do anything. I um—I saw that he had put a thing on the radar that kept it from broadcasting our location so I… dismantled it."

Nina blinked. "You did _what_?"

"He tried to attack me, I had no choice," Mandy monotoned, eyes far away. Nina's eyes widened, shocked. Mandy heaved a sigh. "He saw what I was doing and came down to the engine room..."

They're in the trenches of a storm, riding treacherous waves without anyone to drive the boat or to help. They were utterly and completely alone. Every horror story their father ever told them flooded her mind; clogged every recess. Nina felt her body tense. It wasn't just her; she was the oldest—it was her responsibility to look after them: Mandy, Erik, Stefani and Logan.

"So you knocked him out?!" she panicked. Her feet moved her closer to the captain's chair. "Mandy, none of us know how to do this! What the hell were you thinking?!"

Fight or flight.

She hadn't been. "I—I didn't mean to!" _I thought he was going to kill me, I swear. I'm sorry, I know I wasn't thinking, the boat wasn't exactly my first priority... maybe if I had let him—maybe he wasn't actually going to kill me—we wouldn't be in this situation. _

Nina's eyes were bright with terror. "Get up," she ordered. "You don't know what you're doing."

A skittish look played across Mandy's face, but she obeyed nonetheless. "You don't know what you're doing either," she protested.

Nina tentatively wrapped her hands around the controls and managed to take the _Obsession_ clumsily over the next wave. "Well, you were just sitting here staring at the thing."

She tried to remember everything their father had ever taught her about driving a boat, which, honestly, wasn't all that very much. Unfortunately, all she could recall was that the deadline for The University of Washington's early decision applications was the first of November. She had her driver's license—that had to count for something, right?

Mandy frowned at the floor. "I'm sorry."

"That's not going to help us much," Nina reprimanded voice low and flat. She steeled herself as the wheelhouse was assaulted by another huge wash of water.

Mandy tucked a length of hair behind her ear. Her everything hurt—her head was ringing, she couldn't breathe properly and her ankle was starting to scream like an SOB and she hadn't slept in over a day, unless unconsciousness counted... but she didn't want to let Nina down. Observantly, eyes to the radio, she commented, "Channel sixteen is the Coast Guard."

Her sister stiffly reached for the radio. She jabbed the power button with her thumb—no response. She held it to her ear, and sighed, "Its dead…and the radar's gone. Must have been knocked out during the storm… when no one was at the wheel."

"Oh." Mandy felt like someone kicked her in the stomach. As a recent recipient of such treatment, she would know. "Maybe I could fix it?"

Nina forced the radio back onto its hanger. "I think you've done enough," she muttered darkly.

* * *

"Fuck!" Sig cursed, jerking violently. He impatiently hit the computer screen with the heel of his hand.

The occupants of the room jumped. "What?" Louise asked from her perch on the opposite side of the room. "What's wrong?"

He reached up blindly to adjust a dial. A few seconds later, he cursed again. "They're gone."

"What?!" June cried, rising up to look over his shoulder. "What do you mean, _gone_?"

He touched the pad of his finger to the spot on the screen where the _Obsession_ had been previously located. The digit slid slowly from the glass, lingering lovingly. _Where are you two? _Was that to be the last time he saw his girls?—saying careless goodbyes before rushing out the door to go to a party?

He sighed, hand lethargically returning the controls, eyes cast out over the rising seas. The _Northwestern_ had not yet entered the wealth of the storm. Answers laid in wait uneasily in the back of his throat. What could he tell his wife? He cleared his throat. "It could mean nothing. They weren't showing up on the radar before. It could just be faulty."

"Or?" Louise this time.

Sig shrugged; June's hands came to rest on his shoulders. He didn't want to think about the inevitable worse-case scenario. "They're deeper in the storm than we are. It's likely that _that's_ what knocked it out."

"Or?"

"Just stop," he growled, slamming his hands on the dashboard. June increased the pressure of her purchase on his shoulders. "It could mean nothing!"

_Or it could mean that the boat has sunk. _

_It could mean that they're dead. _

* * *

She impulsively grabbed the decrepit rain gear. The radio and radar systems were knocked out because of the storm. She could fix them. It wouldn't be that hard—she'd done it before. And if she fixed it, they could get in touch with the Coast Guard, and they would be found, and they could get off this floating deathtrap.

She grasped the slippery fabric and tried to work her jean-clad legs into the stiff bottom half. Fastening it around her waist as snugly as possible, she realized it was almost comical how large it hung on her tiny frame; it was like wearing a tent. Mandy rearranged her sweatshirt and pulled the hood over her head and finished donning the gear.

She needed boots. Her converse would get soaked through in seconds.

"What are you doing?" asked a voice from behind, startling her.

Mandy jumped. "Sweet Jesus, Erik!" She had released them from the stateroom fifteen minutes prior and had instructed them, as per Nina's orders, to stay put in the galley. "What are you doing out here?"

Erik graced her with an appraising look. "What are you doing out here? Nina said to stay inside." He gestured to her slicker and the fact that they were currently positioned in the boat's ready room.

Mandy froze. "Uh... well..." She then seemed to remember that she was being confronted by her eleven year old cousin who was, as well, breaking Captain Nina's mandate. She tried to affect a stern look and locked her hands on her hips. "I told you to stay at the table."

She was received with a general uncaring look.

She sighed. "I'm going to attempt to fix the radio. And, if possible, the radar."

Erik nodded. "Are there any more slickers?"

"Oh no," Mandy chastised, shaking her head, then her pointer finger. "You are not going out there."

Disregarding his cousin, Erik began to rummage around the closet from which Mandy had procured her outrageously large rain gear. "I wonder if there's boots in here..."

"Erik!" she shrieked indignantly as he disappeared into the closet.

He returned a few moments later with a rain suit over his shoulder and a pair of thick rubber boots in each hand. "I'm _not_ letting you go out there alone. It'd be suicidal."

Mandy was speechless.

He thrust a pair of boots into her pliant grasp, and then began to wiggle his way into the slicker. "Crap this is big, who wore these—giants? And you're going to need those boots. You should be able to wear your sneakers inside of them."

* * *

Nina's entire body jerked in fear as a large... something hit the foggy window on the back door of the wheelhouse. What the hell was on deck? Her eyes flickered back and forth between the front windows and the back door; her torso twisted awkwardly half way in the seat to accommodate.

"What the fuck?!"

She was even more startled when Erik appeared at the door. He undid the latch and peeked his head inside.

"What the hell?!" Nina yelled in his general direction. Her brows furrowed in concentration as she focused on getting the boat over the next wave.

Erik raised an eyebrow. "Do you know what you're doing?" he questioned calmly. "With the boat, I mean."

Nina opened and closed her mouth multiple times in rapid succession. "Me?! Me?—you!—what are you doing out there?!"

Erik shrugged, and then opened the door wider to allow his entire figure. He was swathed in a large pool of yellow plastic. Nina shivered as a gust of wind sprinted through the room. Rain dashed through the open door. He braced himself with both hands against the doorjamb to fight against the rolling sea. "Mandy's fixing the radio."

"What?" Nina was distracted by another wave, cautiously toggling the throttle. Something clicked. "Wait—she's fixing the radio? How?"

Erik craned his neck to look up at something. "She's fiddling with something on the mast."

"WHAT?!" Nina shrieked. She made to stand up, her hands flying, abandoning the controls, then remembered what she was supposed to be doing—keeping the boat from sinking was probably a good first priority. "No! Get her off—."

She was cut off by the radio crackling to life.

"Hey!" Erik cheered, shifting to poke his head back outside. He gave Mandy a thumbs up before returning his gaze to Nina. "She got it! She's going to start on the radar now, so—."

"No!" She interrupted. "No! Get her down and in here! I don't want either of you on deck again, you got me!"

Erik leaned outside. The wind turned, and sheets of rain poured into the wheelhouse. He shouted over the din, "HEY MANDY, NINA WANTS YOU DOWN!"

Mandy's response was muted by the wind, but Erik heard her and relayed the message. "She says that she needs to fix the radar."

Nina sputtered and turned to fully face forward. If her little sister was hanging off the mast, she needed to devote her full faculties to keeping the boat as steady as possible. "Tell her I don't care! I want her in here, _safe_!"

Erik stepped out; the door swung shut behind him.

Oh God.

_Its dead…and the radar's gone. Must have been knocked out during the storm… when no one was at the wheel. _

Shit.

_I think you've done enough._

And the Sister of the Year Award goes to...

The door opened again and Nina waited for whatever Mandy wanted Erik to return with. Her sister's actual voice was cause for surprise. "You're such a control freak, you know."

Nina was flooded with relief and tried to hide it. She chided, "What have I told you about climbing poles in forty knot winds?"

She could imagine her sister's cheeky grin when she supplied, "Only do it if they're stuffing tips in your panties?"

Nina could barely resist the urge to bash her head against the dashboard. Repeatedly. But... she'd never been happier than in that moment. Mandy was safe. Erik was safe. Stefani was safe. Logan was safe. That creep was... dead? They could get through this.

But most importantly, Mandy was safe. Which was a huge leap from dead.

She could do this.

* * *

**Authors Note: **Hey look, I updated in a timely fashion! Yay me. As usual, props to Lauren, aka **Mahone_Chic_89** for dealing with my chronic bitching about writing and writer's block. Love you Lauren! (Go check out her stories! Now!) Updated in honor of the new episode tonight. :)

**Disclaimer: **Per usual, not mine. If only, if only...

**REVIEW PLEASE! **

**Reviews are food for the soul :)**


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